Castrol collaborated with Lunar Outpost in the development of an all-new Mission Control for their groundbreaking mission.
After traveling over 200,000 miles and reaching speeds of up to 20,000 mph - 10 times the speed of sound - Lunar Outpost’s MAPP rover successfully made it to the Moon, collected data from the lunar surface and in transit.
Castrol was proud to collaborate and support the development of the all-new mission control in Denver, Colorado, which will be instrumental in future Lunar Outpost missions.
Lift off
Nicola Buck, SVP Marketing, Castrol. To the Moon…..the Lunar Voyage 1 blasts off from Cape Canaveral.
Lunar Outpost is a industry leader in space robotics, lunar surface mobility, and space resources. The company is on a mission to enable an extended human presence in space while utilising its vast resources to drive progress on Earth. From rovers headed to the Moon to establish infrastructure, to the creation of oxygen on Mars - their impact spans the solar system.
Lunar Outpost named Castrol the lead Mission Control Centre collaborator for its Lunar Voyage 1 mission. The Mission Control Centre will be the primary centre of operations and decision-making during Lunar Outpost's Lunar Voyage 1 (LV1). Castrol has worked with NASA since the first Apollo missions, offering decades of space expertise to the Lunar Outpost team.
Beginning with NASA's Mercury and Gemini programs in the 1960s, Mission Control played a pivotal role in pioneering space exploration. In these early days, Mission Control Centres were filled with engineers and technicians who relied on analogue systems and slide rules, making split-second decisions with far less automation than today.
Communication delays and basic displays meant teams had to work with limited data, relying heavily on their expertise and instincts to guide missions safely through uncharted territory in space exploration history.
Today's Mission Control Centres are the height of modern technology. Teams use advanced digital systems, real-time data analysis, and global communication networks to manage complex space missions with precision and efficiency.
As one of many companies working on Lunar Voyage 1, Castrol supported Lunar Outpost to develop a new kind of Mission Control. The state-of-the-art design hub will help shape the future of space exploration as we know it.
Lunar Voyage 1 is Lunar Outpost's inaugural mission to the Moon. The company's Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) Rover landed near the Lunar South Pole to undertake several critical tasks: the collection of valuable data and prospecting information from an array of sensors to inform future lunar programs.